Which terminal cancers are relatively painless?
This was not our experience AT ALL. My MIL was extremely angry when we moved her to a nursing home. She lived alone and had already started several fires in her kitchen, locked herself out of her house too many times to remember, given a ridiculous amount of money to people who came to her door, etc. She could no longer take care of herself & always smelled like feces, but was totally unaware of it. Perhaps someone with heart disease or cancer would appreciate that you were caring for them, but dementia is entirely different.
At the point at which someone could make the decision for euthanasia, the dementia is probably not that far along. When it’s full-blown dementia, that’s too late. At that point, the person probably doesn’t comprehend much of anything. But at the beginning it’s more occasional forgetfulness and things like that. At the point at which I can understand I’m suffering from dementia, I would make the decision to be afflicted with a disease which would kill me in a relatively short period of time. That should allow me to have some enjoyable time with the family where I’m still the person I was and everyone can make a more gentle transition.
Why did you have to pay the nursing home bill? Shouldn’t she have been eligible for Medicaid once her assets were used up?
For me, I don’t think I could actively commit suicide, but I would probably just plain old refuse any medical treatment beyond comfort care, and hopefully die naturally before I totally lost my mind.
By the time her assets ran out, she had been in the same nursing home for over 10 years. She far exceeded every doctor’s expectation of how long she would live. It was a very stressful time for her (adult) children & there was lots of arguing, which I stayed out of. But I did tour the medicaid nursing homes in our area & they were awful-basically a smelly warehouse for people waiting to die. The family decided that they would rather pay to keep her where she was, rather than have her endure the stress of moving & losing her caregivers. Also we kept thinking she was going to die, but she just kept on. In retrospect, I wonder if her kids would have made the same decision if they knew how long she would live in that state.
FWIW my MIL did not have alzheimers, but frontal temporal lobe dementia, which is very different. She didn’t have much memory loss, but had major personality changes & lost all executive function. It’s a horrible disease.
The fact that dementia is a continuum makes the question in the OP more challenging. Setting that aside though, I’d opt for euthenasia.
Yup.
I’d say my goodbyes, make sure that the money thing was taken care of ( i.e. I’m worth nothing when I die ), and then get to a state that allows for assisted suicide.
Problem is, my dearly beloved has made it clear she’s very much opposed to this. So, a bit of a quandary.
Unwinding the development of the human brain from adult and functional to infantile, then incapable of supporting life, is not an option. Not for me.
I read somewhere (sorry, don’t remember exactly where) that in Oregon, which has an assisted-suicide provision, about half of the people who are approved for the program never fill the prescriptions, and about half of the people who do never use it. The most common reason for the latter is because they died naturally prior to the date they chose, and not far behind is that the day arrived, and they didn’t want to do it, at least not yet. However, knowing that this option was available to them gave them some element of control in their lives, and that of their caregivers.
Dr. Kevorkian’s first patient was like this; she’d received an Alzheimer’s diagnosis but was still competent to make decisions on her own. IIRC, she was also about 50 years old, which is awfully young to go through something like that, and it was a factor in that decision.
I wish people would stop saying that Robin Williams committed suicide. Technically, he did, but the autopsy revealed that he also had Lewy Body Dementia, which is like a cross between Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s and much worse than either. Its first symptoms are paranoia and depression, which his family did say he was experiencing shortly before his death.
By the time a definitive diagnosis is possible dementia is well on its way to destroying the brain. So yeah, I’d settle my affairs, figure out what to do with my pets, sit down with the grandkids to explain why what’s going to happen is going to happen then I’d take the easiest route out I can find–and as a previous successful suicide (I got better!) I’m pretty well versed in how to duck out early. Then I’d do it. My mind is all there actually is of me, the body just carts it around. If the mind is gonna be gone I don’t want my insensate meat zombiing around freaking people out.
No question for me. Euthanasia.
I would consider it but -------- having had loved ones die both ways it would be a hard choice to consider.
Dementia, no way. I have experience with family members with dementia. Dementia takes a lot of you away, no question, but not all of it. To me, it’s not about other people. It’s about the person with dementia. Are they still getting enjoyment out of life? If they are, then they should continue to live it. Period.
If i can still enjoy my music, or play a game of Qbert, or watch a movie or TV show, or I’m physically able to enjoy a game of ping pong or take a walk outside, then I’ve got a reason to keep on truckin’. In my experience, most people with dementia do in fact still enjoy life. If anything, it’s the elderly folks whose bodies are breaking down with their mind intact who are more miserable.
Someone once said, maybe here, that the time to put your dog to sleep is when you can honestly look at him and decide that he’s no longer having fun being a dog. I’d say the same applies to humans. if your life is built around things that will go away once you get really old, then maybe you should consider an early exit. But if your life is built around simple pleasures, you’ll probably always have something to live for.
I’ve seen it enough times in family members. I’m not going out that way.
Yes.
As a caregiver, I would like to add a slightly different view to this. If you want to settle your affairs and check out shortly after your diagnosis, okay. Your life - your decision. But, if you want to wait until you’ve lost the ability to enjoy life, that’s asking a lot of your loved ones. They basically have to kill you. They have to take an active role in taking your life. That’s a helluva thing to ask of a loved one. My wife is long past the point of being able to make decisions, but even if she had expressed a desire for euthanasia earlier (she didn’t), I don’t think I could do it. I dress her, I bathe her, I help her go to the bathroom, I cook for her, I do everything for her. Basically, I would do anything for love, but I won’t do that.
This is why I think doctor/nurse/phlebotomist-assisted suicide should be the law of the land. This is definitely not a role that should delegated to family members.
Yes, I would want to go. I don’t want to ever be a burden on my family, or be at the mercy of healthcare workers, many of whom I’m sure are fine individuals. But no thanks, not if I can avoid it.
Ah, the thread.
As part of moving into a home, my then-98yo grandmother got a general checkup. Bloodwork insultingly good, bone trouble “my right knee hurts sometimes”, etc. The doctor warned us that nevertheless “the life of anybody that old is hanging by a thread”; my cousin burst out “hers must be fishing nylon then!”
Your mom had some high quality fishing nylon.
Dementia is rare in my family; assuming I got a diagnosis today I’d initiate liquidation of my assets (easier on my heirs) and make sure my medical directives were in order. While assisted suicide isn’t legal in Spain, “if’n’when I get to the point where I’m frequently freaking out because I can’t recognize things or people, or become physically agressive, don’t be shy with the morphine” is.
I have been thinking about this quite a bit recently, as my father’s sister-in-law clearly has some form of mental incapacity (not sure if they have a formal diagnosis yet) - not knowing who people are most of the time, even family members she has known for 30+ years, insisting she has been to places when she hasn’t, accusing her husband of not doing things that he clearly has (due to her lack of memory), getting frustrated with him constantly correcting her (however gently or understandingly). It’s very sad for them (well, it always is, of course) in that he has only retired fairly recently and is very fit and active for his age, but they have very few close friends or family nearby so he is in a caregiver role nearly all the time. There is history of dementia in her family but also of longevity. If I were him, I couldn’t help thinking that my golden years are going to be completely taken over by her illness. But I’d also be thinking “better or worse, richer or poorer, in sickness and in health” - there’s no way I would do anything other than provide the best care I could. If I were her - well, she doesn’t seem to have many lucid moments these days, but clearly she still enjoys life - we recently celebrated her only child’s wedding, and she kept dancing until after I’d retired for the night. She is also enthused by her great-nephew (amazing the effect small children can have on the aged), even though I doubt she knows he is a relative. So although she probably doesn’t have the capacity right now to make the decision posed by the OP, if she did I don’t think it would be in favour of euthanasia.
That all being the case, for me I think the answer is that I’d hold out. I don’t want to be a burden on my nearest and dearest (or the state), but it’s too complex a decision to be able to take in advance. There is also, of course, always the hope that advances in medical science might be able to reverse the decline. Maybe I’d become an alcoholic, though that may not kill me any quicker or easier (for my or my family) than the dementia.
I know this is a position that is very common and very underrepresented in this thread. I don’t really understand it, but that doesn’t mean I can’t respect it. I presume it’s most commonly a cultural thing–religion, or something like an ethnicity where religious beliefs are inextricable from cultural ones (i.e. even atheists from the culture will have values inspired by the religion). In other cases it may be no more complicated than fear of being murdered disguised as a suicide.
My family has been de-ethnicised for at least 5 generations, soon to be 6 if my kids start spawning. Some measure of Protestantism has been sporadically observed, but I don’t think any of us could be called devout. I was raised to be practical, even in matters of ceremony and celebration. Death is not an unemotional affair, but there is no wailing, rending of garments, widows leaping on pyres, or rose-tinting the deceased. It is as much an inconvenience brought on by having a body to dispose of.
With that, absolutely, euthanize the living daylights out of me when my failing memory stops being funny and when my continued existence starts becoming a net negative to the family. Nobody will particularly like doing it. But culturally, for us, the intentional loss is considered the height of responsibility given the financial and emotional disaster of the alternative. I have a keen interest in the old “tying my head in a dry cleaning bag full of nitrogen” bit. Maybe in the bathtub to facilitate any unforeseen cleanup.